Volume 585 Issue 7823, 3 September 2020

Inequities and other social realities must be factored into diagnoses and tracing of COVID-19.

Cooling particles in a volcanic plume intensified the drought that toppled the Ming dynasty.

The Somali elephant shrew, unseen by scientists for decades, is well-known to people in Djibouti’s rocky deserts.

Hardy bacteria thrive on an antimicrobial metal — and turn it to their advantage.

Neurons that tamp down eating and drinking become sluggish after consumption of indulgent treats.

The latest science news, in brief.

Political meddling, disorganization and years of neglect of public-health data management mean the country is flying blind.

Researchers call on universities to offer inclusive policies that make fieldwork safer.

A slew of detailed studies has now quantified the increased risk the virus poses to older people, men, and other groups.

The institute near Bucharest hosts the world’s most powerful scientific laser — but some scientists say that poor management is threatening the facility and the project.

Viral immunologists say that results so far have been predictable — here’s why that’s good news.

Researchers are struggling to tally mortality statistics as the pandemic rages. Here’s how they gauge the true toll of the coronavirus outbreak.

The poisonous legacy of industry holds lessons, two books show.

The COVID-19 economic crash threatens the international trade networks that make clean energy cheap — abandoning them puts the climate at risk.

As coronavirus infection and death rates explode across the nation, a survey reveals a marked increase in graduate and undergraduate students’ mental-health struggles.

A suite of tools can help researchers to manage citations for grants and papers, and share those references with colleagues.

Flow-cytometry manager Armando Pacheco describes how he helps researchers to plan experiments that involve categorizing and counting individual cells.

Volumes of fluid have previously been made to float above air by vibrating the air–fluid system vertically. It now emerges that an ‘antigravity’ effect enables objects to float upside down on the air–fluid interface.

Structures similar to closed-ended tunnelling nanotubes have now been seen connecting pericyte cells in the mouse retina. The structures enable pericytes to coordinate their responses to neural activity, thereby modulating blood flow.

A mutation in the C9orf72 gene is the most common genetic cause of two neurodegenerative diseases. A newly identified immunological function for the C9orf72 protein points to a potential therapeutic strategy for these diseases.

Contradictory values for the masses of atomic nuclei have cast doubt on the reliability of these widely used quantities. A new mass measurement of the deuteron, the second-simplest atomic nucleus, clarifies the situation.

A cellular condition called oxidative stress can kill cancer cells. The finding that skin cancer cells evade such destruction using lipids acquired while passing through lymphatic vessels reveals a mechanism that boosts cancer spread.

Simulations of formation of dark matter haloes ranging in size from Earth mass to clusters of galaxies find a universal halo density structure spanning 20 orders of magnitude in mass.

Penning trap mass spectrometry is used to measure the masses of the deuteron and the HD⁺ ion with unprecedented precision, reducing the uncertainty of the proton mass reference value.

Manipulation of the effective gravity of an oscillating liquid creates stable buoyancy in the lower surface of a liquid layer levitating above air, allowing bodies to float upside down.

Lead halide-based quasi-two-dimensional perovskite films with different organic cations are used to create stable green lasers under continuous-wave optical pumping in air at room temperature.

The near field of a terahertz wave confined to a scanning probe tip provides femtosecond atomic-scale forces that coherently modulate the switching probability of a molecule between two stable adsorption geometries.

A vanadium-based lithium-rich disordered rock salt oxide is shown to work as a low-potential anode with rapid intercalation kinetics for lithium-ion batteries.

Modelling experiments show that the El Niño response to global warming is self-modulating and depends on its historical variability; if current variability is high, future variability will be low.

A quantitative analysis of the impact of species introductions on mutualistic seed-dispersal networks indicates that introduced species are increasingly erasing natural patterns of network biodiversity.

High-coverage, ultra-long-read nanopore sequencing is used to create a new human genome assembly that improves on the coverage and accuracy of the current reference (GRCh38) and includes the gap-free, telomere-to-telomere sequence of the X chromosome.

Genetic studies in Drosophila combined with structural analyses show that glypicans bind palmitoylate moieties in Wnt ligands, and thus shield Wnt ligands from their aqueous environments to enable them to signal to their distant receptors.

Retinal pericytes connect via interpericyte tunnelling nanotubes into functional syncytia that regulate microcirculatory blood flow to help to match local blood flow with neuronal activity.

Studies of mice and humans suggest a role for loss of the C9orf72 protein in some neurodegenerative disorders: with reduced C9orf72 levels, there is more inflammation mediated by the STING protein in immune and brain cells.

Germ-free mice co-colonized with two bacterial strains from the small intestinal flora showed increased susceptibility to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, implicating the synergistic effects of these microorganisms in this mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

Results of an exploratory interim analysis from a phase I trial show that an RNA vaccine targeted towards four melanoma-associated antigens produces durable objective responses in patients with melanoma that are accompanied by strong CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cell immunity.

Melanoma cells undergo less oxidative stress and less ferroptosis in lymph than in blood, owing to higher levels of oleic acid in lymph, and thus exposure to the lymphatic environment increases subsequent metastasis through blood.

In a study performed in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, ‘closed mitosis’ is shown to occur via local disassembly of the nuclear envelope within the narrow bridge connecting segregating daughter nuclei, and a key role is identified for Les1, which restricts nuclear envelope breakdown to the bridge.

In Bacillus subtilis, unlike in Escherichia coli, transcription and translation of genes are not tightly coupled, and pioneering ribosomes lag substantially behind RNA polymerases.

An approach for the design of protein pores is demonstrated by the computational design and subsequent experimental expression of both an ion-selective and a large transmembrane pore.

Structures of the G_i-coupled CXC chemokine receptor 2 (CXCR2) in complex with CXCL8 and in complex with an allosteric antagonist provide insight into the ligand binding and activation of CXCR2 and its mode of G-protein coupling.

Electrophiles activate the transient receptor potential ion channel TRPA1 by a two-step cysteine modification mechanism, which stabilizes a cytoplasmic loop that controls gating and calcium permeability.